


To Fill My Garden

by Moebius



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:05:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5018593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/pseuds/Moebius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Mass Effect 3, Ashley knows her place is by Shepard's side. But she won't have to keep vigil alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Fill My Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



> A thank you to my friend and writing partner, Anika, who's always a good cheerleader when I doubt my ability to finish a story for a ficathon. And to my gaybestie, Jon, who served as the best beta reader a gal could ask for.
> 
> And to my recipient: this was a pairing (etc.) I never really thought about, but that stuck in my mind as soon as I saw it. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> The title is from a quote by Tennyson: "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever."
> 
> A small note on setting: though I don't spend a ton of time on the state of the galaxy, this is a bit of an AU where both the Destroy (high readiness) and Synthesis ending happen. So basically Shepard jumps into a beam of light and... ends up under the rubble in London. Yay!

It was Ashley who found Shepard, in the rubble of what was left of London, under the remains of the Crucible. She considered it repayment of a debt, though if pressed on it she'd never say what debt, exactly. Maybe Shepard saving her on Virmire, though she'd say until her dying day that it was Kaidan who should still be alive. Or maybe for Shepard taking her off Mars and coming to her bedside every time the Normandy docked. Or maybe for Shepard taking the shot and ending Udina before Ashley made the wrong choice. Or maybe for any number of other times Shepard saved Ashley, literally and figuratively.

So Ashley searched the wreckage of a once-great city, past the empty husks of Reaper forces and corpses of the allied races of the galaxy who had made their stand on Earth. Under the rumble of the clean up trucks and the murmurs of the rescue crews, she heard a cough... and she knew immediately. There was Shepard. 

"I've got you," she called, dropping her rifle and running towards the pile of debris. People would ask her how she knew, but she didn't have a good answer. She just did. It was Shepard, and so she used every ounce of strength in her body to pull the debris off her commander. Her friend. Their savior. Her… "Over here!"

She cradled Shepard's head in her arms as she waited for the med teams to arrive, murmuring soft words. "Into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of hell... Come on Shepard. Please."

\--

It's the second month of the coma, and the _Normandy_ has left without its commanding officer. They offered the command to Ashley. Interim only, but she still didn't feel right about it. She didn't know who was more surprised when she suggested that Garrus was a better fit for the job, Admiral Hackett or herself, but they took her suggestion to heart. After the Reaper War, the lines between species seemed… less important, somehow.

The last time Shepard died, her crew scattered to the wind. This time they have stayed, kept together by the Normandy, and by the gauntlet they had all passed through. They are family now, bound by more than blood; survivors of the greatest war in history, special for the unique role each one played in victory.

Ashley stays behind. It was easy enough to get permission. She is a Spectre, and where else would the Council need her as they retake the Citadel, still in orbit around Earth? But really she spends most of her time in the hospital outside of Paris, where Shepard has been moved, getting what little sleep she can on a cot surrounded by columns of poetry books. She had brought some herself; the ones Shepard had given her while she convalesced in Huerta were never far from reach. But most were gifts from her family and the crew.

"I've never understood the human obsession with poetry." Tali walks into the room, brushing past a collection of twentieth century American poets. Never Ashley’s favorite, but Shepard had had a thing for that era. Has, Ashley reminds herself. Has.

Ashley rubs sleep and exhaustion from her eyes. Tali hasn’t been to see Shepard in the past two months, Ashley figured it was because of the work on Rannoch. “Don’t you have a planet to repopulate?” 

“I’m not really the repopulating type, Spectre Williams.” Tali lifts a book off one of the seats in the room, and rests it on her laps as she sits. “I can’t believe they let you keep these in here.” 

“Spectre business.”

Tali laughs and shakes her head. “How are you Ashley?”

“I’m…” her eyes dart to the Commander’s bed, then back to Tali, who is unreadable as ever behind her mask. “Don’t quarians have poetry?”

There's a pause, but Tali decides to let the subject change. "Okay. I've never understood _any_ species' obsession with poetry. Words... they're just-"

Ashley looks across the bed at her. "Isn't engineering just numbers?"

"It's not the same."

“If you say so, Admiral,” Ashley shrugs, then pushes the toe of her boot against one pile of books, gently. “Shepard once told me that mathematics is the music of the universe.”

Tali snorts, the sound muffled slightly by the filter of her mask. “She _would_ say that. Once you give an engineer biotics, she turns into an insufferable romantic.” She looks at Ashley at that moment, taking in the last two months of idleness and worry. “I never asked. What happened to your family on the Citadel?”

Running a hand through her hair, Ashley stands. She doesn’t want to talk about this here. “Do you want to take a walk?”

“Alright…” Tali glances back at Shepard’s bed, at Shepard, and follows Ashley out.

“My family made it off. I don’t know how. But they were gone before…” She shakes her head. “It’s like the stories you hear of people who missed a flight because of something silly, like a missing sock, and then the eezo core blows and everyone who made the flight dies. There’s an old earth saying that God is in the small things. The details.”

Tali leans against a railing. Over her shoulder in the far distance the Eiffel Tower is visible, the top third of it torn off by a Reaper beam. Paris made it a priority to rebuild. Tali understands the feeling. “If the quarians were to have a god, I suppose it would be in the details.”

“I never asked… I just assumed that-”

“We were, what’s the word: heathens?”

Ashley’s laugh is short and hard. “Actually, no. I assumed you have a God. And it’s the same one as mine.”

“How would that work? The last time quarians had religion, you were apes.”

“I didn’t say religion, Tali. I said God.”

Tali shakes her head, the movement barely noticeable except for a small shift in her hood. “Is this like poetry?”

This time, Ashley’s laugh is unfettered. “I guess it is.”

\--

Tali comes back. First once a week, then more often. The dark circles that had made a home under Ashley’s eyes slowly fade, her shoulders stoop less, and her soldier’s posture returns as she shares her burden with the quarian.

Ashley makes a permanent space for Tali among the books, and then Tali starts to bring her own. What Ashley doesn’t know is that quarians haven’t had paper books for a very long time, even longer than humans. But there’s a shop in Alexandria that will convert e-text to paper, and it’s only a short ride from there to Paris.

They’re almost all ancient quarian books on math and science, but occasionally she’ll bring in the records of an ancestor. Those she shares with Ashley immediately, the rest go on the stacks. Eventually the doctors complain, until Ashley threatens to tear their heads off and stuff an incendiary grenade in the cavern of their chest. 

There’s a long call from the Council after that, and a short one from Admiral Hackett, and then the hospital offers the adjoining room as a storage space. Ashley feels bad enough about taking a room that one of the injured needs that she takes all but the most important books out, to the patient lounge, where they can be read by anyone. 

Tali is pleased to see that Ashley leaves some of the books she brought in Shepard’s room.

They take walks every day, and Ashley is surprised by how much she enjoys Tali's company. They have more in common than she expected. Another two months pass. Shepard hasn't improved, and Ashley isn't sure how much longer she'll be allowed to stay on Earth. The Citadel will be ready to move any day now, and the Council will probably want her there. But when she walks with Tali, she can forget all of that. They talk about poetry and starships, compare shotgun preferences and drone schematics, and for awhile they're just two friends wandering the streets to around the hospital. 

And then Tali brings up Shepard. Worse, she brings up Ashley's _feelings_. “Did she know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re in love with her?”

Ashley can feel the blush creep up her neck, which annoys her more than it embarasses her. When did Tali get so wise? Probably sometime between being the target of an assassination attempt during her Pilgrimage and retaking her homeworld from the machines her people created. The thought makes Ashley smile, which gives her momentary reprieve from the anger and annoyance.

“What’s so funny?”

“When I first met you, you reminded me of my little sister.”

“Yes, I seem to get that a lot.” There's something in her voice that Ashley recognizes, because she's heard it in her own voice enough times. That feeling of frustration when someone thinks of you a certain way based on absolutely nothing but your dossier. And something else. Disappointment?

"If my little sister was an alien." She means it as a joke, an attempt to break the mood without having to talk about it, but when Tali stiffens she realizes that maybe it didn't land as intended. "Sorry, that sounded worse than-"

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. I'm not... Hell, you know I don't feel that way." Ashley doesn’t add the _anymore_ to that sentence. They both know. The first time they really interacted, Ashley had gone to engineering to check up on Tali, to make sure she wasn’t stealing any secrets. It… was a tense few months after that.

"What way, Lieutenant Commander? That non-humans are a plague on the galaxy, or that way about Shepard?"

Now it's Ashley who stiffens. "Can we not?”

Tali moves into Ashley’s space, which immediately gets Ashley’s hackles up. She takes a breath and unclenches her fists, resisting the temptation to push the small quarian away. Tali sighs, which almost sounds musical to Ashley. “I don’t know what I was thinking, it’s just that… I’ve really enjoyed this time here with you, and I have to go back. To Rannoch. I thought, before I left -”

“What, you’d interrogate me about my feelings for my commander, who’s lying in a coma thirty meters away, who glows green at night from those damned scars she got after she died the first time?” Ashley’s voice rises, but she manages to get control, eyes darting around to see if anyone heard. 

“Sometimes you’re a dumber human that Shepard is!”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“Keelah, if I didn’t have a mask, I’d kiss you, and then _maybe_ you’d get it. Not that it helped with Shepard.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“I had an infection for a week, just to show her my face, and I think she still doesn’t know how I feel.”

Ashley is speechless. Almost. “So, you’re… with Shepard?” She’s surprised by the jealousy she feels. Not because she feels it. She _is_ in love with Shepard, something she’d never thought she’d admit to anyone out loud. But because she is as jealous of Shepard as she is of Tali. She blushes again.

“No.” Another musical sigh. “She didn’t. We never. She thought of me as a _little sister_. At least, I think she did. And then after the court martial, I… told her how I felt. But there were the Reapers, and she got sent to Earth. Besides, who _isn’t_ in love with Shepard?”

“You were court martialed?”

Tali is silent for a moment. Ashley isn’t sure, but she imagines the quarian smirking beneath her mask. “That’s really the follow up you have? Really?”

Acutely aware of how close Tali is still standing, given all of this, Ashley feels a new blush creep up her cheeks. “I… thought the geth had fixed your suits?”

It’s Tali’s turn for confusion. “Huh?”

“So you, you know. Don’t get infections anymore?”

“Lieutenant Commander Williams, are you saying you want to kiss me?”

“It’s _Spectre_ Williams, Admiral, and I don’t know what I’m saying.” Except she does know, and, in that moment, she makes up her mind. “Do you want to come back to my place?”

“Shepard’s room?”

“ _No_ , I actually rented a flat nearby. Just… in case.”

“Just in case a quarian Admiral came to town and hit on you?”

Ashley laughs, and the tension of the moment fades away. “I guess so.”

“Are you sure I don’t remind you of your little sister?”

“Oh God, no." She reaches a hand out and touches the edge of Tali's hood "Not at all."

\--

The next morning, Ashley and Tali come back to the hospital together. Ashley is nothing but formal, but Tali keeps close, making sure to brush up against her in the elevator. “Tali,” Ashley whispers. 

To both of their suprises, Shepard is sitting up in bed when they get there.

“Hey you two,” the Commander’s eyes pass between the two of them, and a knowing smile spreads across her face. “What’s new?”


End file.
